If you’re a creative, chances are you’re always working on something new, whether that’s a personal project or learning a new skill, you’re always pursuing the next thing, even if you have a full time job that’s in a completely different industry. I’m lucky that my full time job is connected to the Video Games industry, but even then, I spend very little of my time actually creating concept art. I know some of you work jobs totally unrelated to your passions and put in the hard work after hours to dedicate time to your personal projects, so I hope the following tips are useful if you’re looking for ways to get a better balance between your day job and personal projects, and to stay motivated when your job is causing you to feel burnt out.

Be Focused

The most important thing to nail down first is being focused on your projects, something I’ll admit I struggle with, I think we all do! We get started on something and come up with a new idea and then move onto that, and it’s easy to end up in a cycle (and a mountain) of unfinished projects. Although it’s easier said than done when you have a lot of ideas, which is the best one to focus on?

Something that really helps me to decide what to work on is to determine what I actually want to improve on, achieve or add to in my work. For example, being a concept artist, that might be things like, creating a new portfolio piece and then you could try to think of the aim of the portfolio piece too, are you trying to get better at character design? Are you aiming for a specific style to work at a studio you want to apply to? Or it might be that you just want to try out a new technique or learn a new software, or even a totally new style! Recently I’ve been working on my own IP and using that to improve on areas such as my character design sheets, my environment ideation and implementing 3D into my work.

They key is to do one thing at a time, so because I’ve recently been working on a new character sheet and I really wanted to improve how thorough my character sheets are (in terms of including everything a 3D artist might need; turnarounds, expressions, character personality etc.), that has been the only thing I’ve tried to improve while working on it. For everything else I’ve stuck to my strengths, I’ve stuck with a rendering process I’m comfortable with, a style I love and a theme I love, otherwise, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. I highly recommend just working on one of this focused goals at a time, maybe 2 at a push as it ensures you’re actually finishing things, and if you don’t feel like it one day, work on something you love and know you enjoy, for me that’s usually just sketching weird stuff for a bit! You’ll still be moving forward and improving either way! Don’t put pressure on yourself to always be trying something new, it’s okay to fall back on your strengths sometimes when you just want to create.

Make the time.

This is usually the most difficult thing to do and it’s usually the one we make excuses for the most, however, it can actually be the easiest. All you need is an hour a day, if you can make more time then great, but if you can dedicate an hour a day of ‘distraction free work’ (we will call it DFW from now on) to your personal projects, you’re guaranteed to make progress. This will totally depend on your working hours, lifestyle and personal commitments, but try to think where you can squeeze that hour in.

Personally, because I work digitally, I don’t really like to leave my DFW hour until late at night, I prefer to do it as early as possible. So I usually get up around 6.30/7 and work for an hour before getting ready for my day at work. I find this really helps because the world isn’t really as awake at that time, I don’t need to check social media, I don’t need to check my emails, I just get straight into my DFW task for that day. Quite often, if my partner is working late I can continue to have DFW hours after work too, and the nights when I want to do something else, it’s okay, because I know I’ve already put that hour in first thing. This is also why having a focused goal and a list of tasks to reach that goal is helpful, because you can get straight into it everyday rather than wasting time thinking about what you need to do, which is not ideal when you might only have an hour!

Be organised.

This is essentially what will allow you to put the last two points into practice, because even if you have those in place, actually aligning the two together can still cause you to procrastinate and waste time (this is coming from experience because this is probably what causes me to procrastinate the most!). Now that you have your focus and your DFW work time mapped out, it’s good to create some sort of overview of what you need to do and when, in what order etc. that way you can just check your plan and knuckle down.

Personally I have a grid with post-it notes stuck to it with all of the things I am working on or want to work on (some have obviously been scribbled out to keep certain things hidden!), and I tend to keep it to one goal or project per post-it, sometimes with sub points just to give me an idea of how big the project is. Keeping one project or goal per post-it helps a lot, because it’s easy for the scope to look small if you put everything onto one post-it, whereas if each project has its own, you can really see what the workload is like for all of your ideas. Having them on this grid also helps because I can organise them by priority, I find this super helpful because I tend to automatically only focus on what’s at the top rather than getting distracted by all of my options. This might not work for everyone, some people prefer bullet journalling or using apps like Notion or To-doist, but I just find that I don’t check them, whereas having them physically in front of me on my desk I’m constantly reminded of what I’m currently working on and what’s coming up.

I’ve also recently started using a spreadsheet (example above), because I find that even though I have my post-its, a whole project can still be overwhelming and quite paralysing for me so the spreadsheet helps me to break down each project into all of its components so that I can focus on one element of the project at a time and work towards it’s completion as a whole. I’ve also set it up so that I can mark projects as ‘not started’, ‘next up’, ‘in progress’ and also ‘complete’ which highlights the row as green to show it’s completion which is super satisfying! I think being able to see my small achievements throughout the project and know that I am actually getting things finished helps me to stay motivated and focused in the long run, so I’d highly recommend trying it out. I did consider making a template of this, but I wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested, so let me know if you are and I can make one available!

Look at the big picture.

It’s inevitable that you’re going to feel burnt out sometimes, whether that’s because of your day job, life, or just feeling like you’re not really getting anywhere. I’ve said this before and it’s too important to not say it again, remember why you started! You will often go through periods of working on personal projects and feeling like you’re not making much progress, those feelings of accomplishment can be few and far between. So if you are working on something that’s taking a while, or maybe learning a new technique is proving to be quite tedious, try to step back and envision what the end result of it will be and what it will add to you and your work, refocus yourself a little.

More importantly, take breaks. Having a DFW hour each day can obviously help to keep things moving on your own projects, but it doesn’t mean you have to beat yourself up if you have to have the odd day or even a chunk of time where you don’t put the hours in. The grind culture and working 24/7 in general is promoted quite a lot, especially on social media, but don’t get pulled into that, it’s not healthy. Plus life is too short, time isn’t refundable, it’s the most valuable currency that there is, so be sure that you’re always using your time with intention!

I hope this was a useful, I’ll be back with another blog post again soon!

Balancing personal projects and a full time job.